Izabela Labuda made her San Francisco debut tonight, in the Symphony's
annual `A Night in Old Vienna' concert in Davies Hall.

Notwithstanding her name, the soprano is not an Italian-Hungarian.  She
is from Chorzow, Poland.  It is a town you may (or may not) know better
as Koenigshuette.

Making her debut as Adina only 10 years ago, Labuda has had her share
of Fledermice, Merry Widows, Marguerites, Antonias, provincial houses
in Europe and the equivalent in the U.S.  (Saint Gallen is provincial,
Minnesota is not, at least according to Minnesotans; besides the Vikings
are Superbowl-bound and the Saint Gallen soccer team is not.)

With the remarkable violinist-conductor-acrobat Peter Guth on the podium
(on and around, to be precise), Labuda sang Lehar and Kalman, the Csardas
from `Fledermaus,' and -- refreshingly in the midst of the tried and trite
-- an aria from Robert Stolz's `Venus in Silk.'

With all my Austro-Hungarian K.u.K.  roots, I found `Spiel' auf deiner
Geige das Lied von Leid and Lust' a novelty, along with information about
Stolz, a biography that commands more familiarity than I possess.  In a
long, long life (1880-1975), Stolz wrote 27 operettas, 2,000 songs, and the
score for more than 100 films.  The `Gruess aus Wien' march played at the
concert tonight is Op.  898.  That's positively Haydnesque, although the
grotesquely noisy music wasn't.

Well, what of la Labuda? I know of no more pleasant voice that is certain
not to have a valid *opera* career.  Operetta she can deal with.  It's a
warm and appealing voice, but she cannot sustain long phrases; the problem
is not lack of technique, but the kind of lung power that cannot get under
the voice and keep it level.  Rather than chop phrases, Labuda has learned
to abbreviate them, so it actually takes some listening before you discover
what's wrong.  Whenever the calculation is not exactly right, she scoops
and goes sharp or flat, but *usually* corrects that midstream.  She is
definitely not a boring singer.

Either her teachers or Labuda herself must have discovered her problems
long ago because her technique is very d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e, `voice
production,' really, not singing.

And, with all her well-practiced stage charms, she still needs to learn one
important lesson.  If you have an orchestra violinist dressed up as a Gypsy
to support you in `Hoere ich Zigeunergeigen,' you must *never* lean on the
poor man as he is trying to play.  The arm, you see, must go in and out.

Ah, well, happy new year to the songbird of Chorzow, and to y'all, as we
say by the brown Danube.

[log in to unmask] (NO attachments)
[log in to unmask] (YES)